Bible – Jerry Lout ⚬ Writer ⚬ Speaker ⚬ Mobilizer

September 12, 2024September 11, 2024

Downstream Drama

The Board cast a unanimous vote. Sometimes such things happen.

The searing heat of Oklahoma’s mid-summer had eased and our annual volunteer-sponsored canoe float down the Illinois River was behind us. It had been a popular event (literally) navigated in the very heart of Cherokee country over past years. Our friend, Les, of Cornerstone Church had rounded up his latest band of water-lovers once again to help facilitate the day-long attraction. Water levels had risen higher than usual this season and fast-paced currents demanded extra vigilance. No one guessed what a close brush we would have with disaster.

A couple hours in, a chorus of sharp cries broke through the relative calm of easy laughter amidst frollicking splash wars of students and new friends The cries of alarm sounded from a place just downstream,

“Quick! Somebody, please hurry. It’s Sai and Rao”, a voice was shouting. “They are in trouble!”

The canoe transporting the pair of South Asia friends had instantly capsized within a narrowed passageway of especially rough waves. As it flipped, throwing the college students to the churning waters, the canoe spun sideways, now pinning the young men against a large downed tree trunk that had long obstructed a portion of the river’s pathway.

The force of the oncoming river pressed strong against the vessel which, in turn, pushed the flailing young men beneath the water again and again. Neither of the two, we later learned, were skilled swimmers. And, like bobbing floats yanked repeatedly downward by powerful arms, the canoers could barely steal a gulp of air in those rare and brief moments breaking through the surface.

Lunging headlong through the torrent, several swimmers reached them. Heaving the capsized vessel up and off the two in abrupt rhythms of Hurculean thrusts, the rescuers freed the men at last. Relief!

(Note: Counted among those volunteers showing up Summer after Summer were two young ladies yet in their teens – Tara and Elizabeth. Float ventures down the Illinois, along with other special outings, fueled their mission vision. Both these women, in time, would plunge into the rigorous work of literacy development, making their presence and skills known in areas of the world void of adequate service in this field. Elizabeth and Tara would each offer up years of service – right into the present – serving full time in linguistics vocations. Advancing literacy and Bible translation, stretching to remote regions of the earth.)

Meanwhile, following a certain drama-filled August Saturday, our ministry’s Board of Directors came easily to their unanimous and unchallenged consensus.

Canoe excursions suspended, till further notice.

May 2, 2024

Crossings

When Mr. Tang joined our luncheon Bible study, he was met with welcoming smiles. Before our weekly sessions would draw to a close, Host Cathy would give opportunity for voicing prayer needs. A few weeks in, Mr. Tang politely raised his hand.

“I wish to have you pray, please. I have been smoking cigarettes for a long time and I have tried to stop the habit many times but with no success. Can you pray for this?”

“Certainly,” Cathy smiled.

A few weeks passed. Again, Mr. Tang’s raised hand.

“I just want to say that from the day of praying about my smoking problem, I have not wanted a cigarette and I have not smoked one since.” Once more smiles met him – this time in happy celebration.

The journey into faith takes as many routes as there are disciples trekking them. Each story unique.

For Mr. Tang – the thoughtful scholar who had competed with his daughter over a picture-story Bible – his narrative continued unfolding, step by gentle step.

“I’m glad you could come, Tang.”

The doctoral student was attentive as he sat with Ann and me, taking in our Sunday morning worship service. The preaching message highlighted God’s servant Joshua leading his people across the Jordan River into the Promised Land. At the close, Pastor Morgan extended an invitation,

“If anyone might be at a place where you sense you are ready to venture into new territory – a new place in your life in God, we welcome you to just come to the front area here for prayer. Jesus Christ will meet you today. God will lead you forward.”

Sensing Christ at work as Mr. Tang moved toward the aisle, I followed him forward. There in the Lord’s house, a quiet setting void of fanfare, I was privileged to lead my friend in a simple prayer as he offered himself to God. A formidable divide was breached.

When the service ended and we had made our way to the lobby, Mr. Tang slowed and turned my way.

“Jerry, when we were there at the front and praying, I felt something. It felt like. . .” He paused to find expression. I never forgot his words – fitting language for a science major, I afterward mused,

“It was like liquid electricity coming into my head and flowing down through my whole body”.

I sensed the sacredness in his tone. We lingered a moment in silence. There was nothing to add.

April 25, 2024April 24, 2024

Taste Sampler

Puzzling or Amusing, which is it? Both perhaps. . .

Cross-cultural workers meet up with any number of puzzlements, leaving one off balance enough to keep the journey intriguing.

The slight-of-body PhD scholar smiled sheepishly as he related a kind of tug-of-war he was in with their nine-year-old daughter.

“Jerry, you know that Bible for children, the one with many pictures that you gave us?”

Noting my nod, Mr. Tang went on. . .

“Well, my daughter and I, we fight over it. She finds the book very interesting, and so do I! So, when she is reading it, I want to read it, and also the other way around.”

For those like me, not raised in a society where the world’s most popular (international best-seller-book ever) is virtually a banned product, the reaction is astonishment.

It is remarkable really. How could a brilliant scholar with multiple degrees to his name find such a widespread piece of famous literature nearly inaccessible?

The entrance of your word gives light*

At Mr. Tang’s tug-of-war description, I couldn’t help smile. The mental image of a distinguished petroleum engineer husband and father pitted in a feisty back-and-forth with his fourth-grade daughter over the Holy Bible. Amusing to be sure. Yet, moments later the weightier, more sobering implication settled in.

Here is nine-year-old Angie, brought by her warm-hearted and, yes, atheist parents to the Land of the Free.

Angie (perhaps from simple curiosity at this point) yearns to take in the stories of God and Jesus. This, while her mother and father – grappling with the thousand adjustments called for in adapting to a new land and culture – carry their own yearnings. Daddy himself nurtures an appetite of some kind or other sufficient to sneak in bits of Bible reading during moments when his daughter isn’t on guard.

Can this household – others as well – be gently introduced to further samplings of the life-giving Word? Lead us, Father.

April 4, 2024

Overflow

Turning onto Xanthus Ave that Thursday evening, I glanced at my watch. “How will this go? Who will show up? Will I be on my game (whatever that means)?

The young lady of last night’s call had suggested the newly-arrived grad students I was preparing to meet were open to learn something of the story of Jesus. “Had any of these scholarly young men ever seen a Bible?”, I wondered, Influenced and shaped as they likely were by their homeland’s official doctrine of atheism.

A niggling question played at my own conscience, “How mindful am I of Jesus Christ in the course of my routine days?”

Dialing back the musings, I eased the car along the curb before the Jesus Inn. Minutes later I was settling into easy introductions and conversations with our new arrivals. The easy part was much to the credit of Weili, her cheery personality mitigating any sense of awkwardness. “At last,” I thought, smiling, “we have a face to go with that sing-song voice from the phone visit!”

That first evening at Jesus Inn – engaging, laughing with, welcoming the newcomers – served as a treasured early catalyst for us at the university. Propelling the ministry forward slow-motion, as we inched our way to becoming a truly transcultural family. We (students, volunteers, friendship partners) could with God’s help, steward a faith culture flowering in deep-hearted care, engaging throughout in meaningful acts of service.

Now – three decades in – the miracle of good seed planted, and of lives yet being changed for the good, stands as evidence that any misgivings or nail-biting angst earlier on were mere distractions. Several of the Jesus-Inn graduate students with their specialties (geology – information technology – petroleum) have proceeded wonderfully forward, bearing fruit within their fresh-discovered faith.

Issuing from the overflow of a young lady’s renovated heart.

March 28, 2024March 27, 2024

A Pulsing Contagion

“Hi Jerry! I’m Weili!”

The cheery voice streamed from the phone. Her accent had the musical lilt of a young Far Easterner, which clearly pulsed with excited urgency.

“I have just recently come to Tulsa from California where I have been studying at a university.”

It’s always a refreshing sound, a cheery voice at the opposite end of a telephone line. Weili caught me a little off guard with her next words – strung together with enthusiasm – high speed.

“Jerry, I am a Christian. I met the Lord there in California. Now I’ve heard about the work you are doing here in Tulsa, and I have a request!” She continued with barely a pause,

“Please come to the Jesus Inn tomorrow night. Bring your guitar! Several new grad-student guys just arrived from my country, and you can sing some songs and tell them about Jesus!”

I smiled at the spunk of this girl I had never met, Somehow she knows of our presence on campus and that I plunk guitar strings now and then. Adding to the mix, I mused, Weili seems a young lady overflowing with boundless joy, and a heart just bursting with evangelistic fervor.

Her spirit (all that I really had to go on) sparked inside me both an element of intrigue and a sense of adventure. Her child-like eagerness felt contagious. Who could not like this person? I thought with a smile.

Finally she paused, making room for a response.

“Well, Okay Weili, If it’s alright with the Jesus Inn folks, I’ll see you there.”

The ‘Inn’ – a string of aged houses lining a stretch of city block near the campus – had gotten launched as an in-residence place offering help and hope to a young generation back in the 1960s. Gordon and Susan Wright, along with ‘recovered-and-in-recovery’ volunteers – together with the Wright’s own children – had long stewarded the unconventional space.

To a long parade of the homeless, the hippied and the bedraggled – from lost and afraid flower children to strung-out , disillusioned druggies – the Jesus Inn became a haven of refuge. A place of hope.

“Lord”, I whispered the next evening as I gathered Bible and guitar and headed out the door, “please meet us, please guide.”

August 17, 2023August 16, 2023

Tooling Up

How does the apprentice of Jesus bring about the shift in his prayer life that he really wants and needs? What raw material can he draw on to grow more a participant than spectator?

It is heartening to know that once anyone – anyone – purposes to advance in the holy enterprise of communing with the Almighty, the Lord himself supplies the means. Ingredients called for to see it through. He sees to it that whatever helpful tool, whatever effective resource is needed, it’s there in easy reach.

Any field of human endeavor that results in life-enriching expression does, of course, call for tools.

Great soul-stirring music – whether gentle and melodic (think Bach) or thundering and strident (think Beethoven) – comes to us because of ‘means’. Sheet music, for instance, helps a good bit!

For a long while, especially in the earlier years, I struggled with what to pray. And how to pray as well, with meaning or effectiveness. It was a welcome day when simple tools (helps) got brought to my attention. I confess I felt a bit foolish having passed over some elementary resources that had been available all along. They simply had not registered on my radar. They were also, most likely, being broadcast in lesser measure to the family of faith than today. Thankfully, that is changing.

Opening my Bible (or Bible app) nowadays, I sense a permission in spending time lingering in just one of the many Psalms, returning to it day after day. This grand book of scripture – a prayer book all its own – has proven a treasured onramp (even a camping spot) for the rhythmic set-aside times with God.

Sitting in stillness, welcoming awareness of God’s presence, I can now borrow from the precise language of the man-after-God’s-heart-worshipper himself. Soon it comes to me that I – employing the tools of the Shepherd-king’s language – am worshipping and petitioning out of the wellspring of my interior soul. How encouraging. Lifegiving. Faith has stirred wakefulness – my prayer life made richer in assurance and trust – in boldness and joy.

This by simply lifting the latch and opening the lid of an ancient toolbox: The Book of Psalms.

July 20, 2023July 20, 2023

A Family Of Words

Closing my eyes, the simple, melodic sounds of kindergartener voices waft in from a season of long ago. I ponder particular bundle of lyrics we Sunday School kids belted out lots of times in those early years. Intuitively we somehow knew that the lines carried life-altering truth – “Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so”.

A phrase or two follows the first. Today I realize that way back then I had started a lifelong journey affirming a profound truth drawn from those stanzas.

I am weak but he is strong.

Piano keys sounded in the modest sanctuary on Oklahoma Street. Vacation Bible School Week had arrived!

For the first time most kids in the room are catching glimpses into a brand new kind of worldview, Jesus loves (all) the little children of the world. They are – every one of them – precious in his sight.

Hans Christian Andersen treasured music’s power, “Where words fail, music speaks.”

Yet, one specially-compiled family of words does not fail. Not to the person whose mind and spirit are open to take them in. The words of scripture. Although ancient in origin, this unique collection of prophetic, historical, poetic works embody a power. A power which today and throughout history transforms people. . . and even times and cultures.

As I (among the millions of others) undertook memorizing Bible verses in my early years and following, I became struck by its life-changing power from the inside out. Not by any magical quality or spooky spell, but because its content is traced not to mere human origin.

I have always been an amateur memorizer at best. But scripture concepts like, I hide your words in my heart so that I may not be habitually given to wrongdoing, find a way of sticking. I find that such passages transport power straight into the soul that chooses to marinate within the ancient text. Inspiration bubbles up of the kind beyond the sheer rah-rahs of the athletic court or stadium. The ancients, I believe, had it profoundly right.

May I encourage the reader. Pursue the Bible. Seek out a community (if it is not currently your practice) that loves God. A gaggle of imperfect seekers, hungry and thirsty, strong after his Word.

For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thought and intentions of the heart.*

June 15, 2023June 14, 2023

George On My Mind

Peace lives on the street called Surrender.

When he shared of his Sarcoma cancer diagnosis, George offered up a request, “Please ask people not to pray for total healing as I really am looking forward to heaven.”

What moves a person to make such an appeal? What routine rhythms of living might bring a man or woman to approach their final months and days with such a mindset?

People who knew George Verwer well understand that these are reasonable questions. And that their answers are within reach. Our attention gets captured when we witness a person displaying what seems complete inner calm when facing distressing news.

George had, through the years, related accounts of his mischief-making days as a youth growing up in New Jersey. He spoke, as well, of a neighbor woman who felt compassion for him in his waywardness and of her commitment in regularly praying for him. The neighbor’s teenage son gifted George a copy of a Bible text, the Gospel of John.

Not long afterward he found himself on a bus en route to Madison Square Garden where he would hear a young preacher offering sermons.

Responding to Billy Graham’s invitation to “turn your life over to the Lord Jesus”, young George came to faith. From there, he went on to proclaim Jesus’ good news of God’s kingdom. Today thousands of obedient Christ-followers staff a worldwide organization he founded, Operation Mobilization. Distributing the Bible and Christian literature became a fervent passion for George.

Among the first pieces of literature he read after his conversion was Billy Graham’s, “Peace With God”. In his ‘yes’ to the Lord as a 16-year-old, the youth had opened himself to God’s peace. Then, throughout his long and often-challenging lifetime, he gave himself over and over to routine surrenderings. Rhythms of practices. Spiritual disciplines.

George’s rhythms of living, all in the companionship of the Holy Spirit, marked him as a man of joyful contentment – a follower and lover of Jesus. Unafraid, even in death.

April 27, 2023

Green Pastures

Well, what do you know!

The expression of mild astonishment is common. What may not be so common is the understanding of ‘know’.

In Bible language to know speaks routinely of intimate interpersonal nearness. Adam knew his wife and she conceived and bore a son.

We know Jesus, not in his material form but by the Spirit who dwells within us. This level of knowing carries more depth and richness than the ‘tightest’ of human relations.

Rather than overthinking the language of “I never knew you”, what if we caught the reality that Jesus is actually calling us straight from his heart to the exact opposite.

As beloved sheep of his pasture, we turn our gaze away from ourselves and simply choose moving nearer the heart of our good Shepherd. His disciples (his sheep) grow to recognize, then relish, his words,

“My sheep hear my voice. I know them. They follow me”.*

The shepherd and sheep image offers up a good picture of what “abiding in Christ” is to look like.

Good Shepherd-Jesus initiates the relationship, “I have come to seek and to rescue wandering sheep. They are lost”. He lifts us from whatever pit we’ve plummeted into in our strayings. Having come to our rescue, he begins tenderly strengthening the bond between himself and us. This journey into routine closeness moves forward to the measure we respond to his Spirit’s promptings, “They hear my voice. They follow me”.

Every ‘yes’ to the good shepherd’s promptings (in prayer, in sitting with scripture, in worship) fosters more knowing. Intimacy, by its nature requires both parties to engage. Our Lord calls, we lean in to listen. He counsels, we respond as best we know to. We worship, he draws nearer yet.

By such means we find ourselves being changed from within. Our connection with God has shifted. The superficial level of knowing him recedes as he ushers us step by obedient step toward and into to his ‘green pastures’. Our knowledge of Jesus grows at the interior level and we can’t help but savor the fragrance of his nearness. We are certain we will never be content with anything less than his close, shepherding companionship.

February 16, 2023February 17, 2023

Lifeline

Hungering?

Not hungering for knowledge of the brainy kind. Not hungering after an experience. Not even hungering after spiritual growth, whatever we might assume that is.

One can stoke an appetite of yearning for the finest of things. But if the very finest of things is missing or drops to even second place on our craving list, we come up short. Like the man who climbs his ladder of success only to discover the ladder has been leaning against the wrong wall.

The relentless hungering after a lesser thing, i.e. anything other than our Lord’s thing, carries the person to one of at least two places.

(A) The place of pride (I am one of those few select souls following hard after the ‘right path’. . . so take note!). Comparing his actions and behaviors to others, he views his spiritual maturity as deeper, more advanced. To this person good performing is everything.

(B) The place of despondence (Why did I ever buy into the notion that satisfaction and contentment were in reach, since all my efforts following this Christian trail have failed at both).

Any time we set out on our own to achieve a thing that can only be obtained by God and his means, we come up short. Disappointed. Frustrated. Disillusioned. Not fun places to be.

Let us picture this. A young lady grows up in a religious tradition where she routinely hears something like, “You must please God every day or you might not make it to heaven”. Or, “Here is a list of things in the Bible you had better be working on if you want to be a real worth-your-salt Christian.” Along the way the girl reads that Jesus calls disciples to follow him.

“I do want to be acceptable to God when I die”, she muses. “I want to be a good Christian. I will do my best to obey God and follow Jesus.”

In time this sincere soul simply grows weary in the trying. Trying to measure up. Day after day, trying and trying. Eventually throwing in the towel.

In the one kept afloat by human pride the bubble bursts. For the other, exhausted and spent in the tryings, all-out collapse awaits.

But then at the last moment, good news!

A lifeline floats our way straight off a New Testament page. Our weary soul rallies at the alluring words from the pen of a seasoned tentmaker,

But now let me show you a way of life that is best of all.*